Obama in China: Tuesday morning edition

It’s November, which is one of the worst times to visit Beijing.  The other bad times include December, January, Chinese New Years, March, April, May 1st Holiday, June, July, August, the first part of September, and the October 1st holiday.

November is cold, it is gray and dusty, and the city folk are in dark moods as they stack cabbage and coal and prepare to hunker down for five months of winter.

But none of that matters to Barack Obama.  And we must thank the president (or so goes the rumor mill in my hutong) for inspiring the Beijing weather gnomes  over the past few weeks to cast their spell for early snow and crisp blue skies with a thin dollop of white stuff to cover the usual Beijing beige.

Yesterday, President Obama participated in a “Town Hall meeting” in Shanghai with the youth in Asia.  Now I grew up in New Hampshire so I know a thing or two about town hall meetings, but yesterday’s event (highlights here) was so tightly scripted and cautious it made the Republican National Convention look like Burning Man.

Adam Minter at Shanghai Scrap offers his thoughts, writing that President Obama’s performance resembled “an

November 17th, 2009

Jeff Wasserstrom: Linkages and Protests

This morning I attended a talk “Tale of Two Cities” given by UCI’s Jeff Wasserstrom.  Professor Wasserstrom is a historian and prolific author, online at The China Beat and The Nation as well as in the real world of books, most recently China’s Brave New World and the forthcoming Global Shanghai: 1850-2010.

I admire the way Professor Wasserstrom engages in the larger discourse on China, both as a serious academic as well as a communicator of ideas to the thinking public at large. The term ”public intellectual” is a bit nebulous and the line between ‘popularizing’ and ‘communicating clearly’ is a fine one, but Professor Wasserstrom walks it nimbly, and he has become a role model of mine in this regard. 

The talk today was on the historical and contemporary relationship between Beijing and Shanghai, long time rivals to be sure, but Professor Wasserstrom suggests that the two cities share a number of historically significant connections, and used the topic as a segue into the lecture’s main takeaway: the importance of these urban linkages in terms of political opposition and popular protest. Professor Wasserstrom, who has also published a volume on student protests in 20th century China, argues that the government is less concerned about the numbers of local protests than they are about

November 10th, 2008

The hutong and a review of Michael Meyer, The Last Days of Old Beijing

This month YJ and I moved from a monstrous soul-sucking xiaoqu near Guijie to a quiet little pingfang off one of the Dongsi hutongs. Never has moving two kilometers meant such a radical change in quality of life.  Note the phrase ‘quality of life’ rather than ‘standard of living,’ a distinction reinforced for me on a daily basis by YJ who was, I will admit, at first somewhat less than enthusiastic about our new digs. There was the five square meters of kitchen which could only be reached, as with our bathroom, by exiting the main part of the structure into the great outdoors and across our narrow yard. There was also the issue of neighbors. I rather enjoyed the idea of being a part of a small community (about a dozen or more other families share our address), and have not been disappointed. Our neighbors routinely come in (often unannounced) and I’ve spent a couple of pleasant evenings in the main part of the yard, gathered around a table talking about whatever it is that comes up when dinner is finished and Yanjing beer is flowing.  For her part, YJ worries about the lack of privacy and the need

August 14th, 2008

Live Blogging: 2008 Beijing Olympic Games Opening Ceremony

YJ is out running around the city as Tianjin’s answer to Brenda Starr, I’m here in The Studio with CCTV on the television, NBC on the Sling Box, and a fridge full of diet coke. I was thinking of wandering out of the hutong to join the madness, but I decided to bunker down and do the multi-television thing. Just so you know, There’s a fair to good sized chance before this whole thing is done I’m going to face “China nationalism” and “Wow, Beijing’s a crazy place” overload and begin drinking scotch heavily, but for the moment at least, let’s do an Opening Ceremony running diary.

6:58 p.m. First things first: Yes, the air today was “not great.” Whether it’s “summer mist” or a “toxic cloud of doom” depends on if you get your news from Xinhua or US local television.

7:02 NBC’s The Today Show kicks off from Beijing where today “What some people are calling ‘the most important moment in modern Chinese history’” will occur.  I guess that whole Liberation-Great Leap Forward-Cultural Revolution-Opening and Reform thing was just a warm up act.  Good to

August 8th, 2008

Helen Couchman’s Workers

Beijing-based artist, Granite Studio friend, and occasional anonymous commentator Helen Couchman has been winging around the world this past month promoting her new book Workers.  Last December, Helen snuck onto the construction site for the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube and offered to take the portraits of any worker who wished to have his or her photograph taken.  Helen then returned the next week and presented each person she photographed with their own copy of the print to keep.  The Australian newspaper The Age this week features an audio slideshow of Helen’s photographs and commentary on her project.  Be sure to check it out and congratulations, Helen!

August 7th, 2008
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